Trial runs of the short distance Vande Metro trains will begin in July 2024. According to officials aware of the move, these trains will eventually ply to and fro over 100-250 kms distances connecting 124 cities across the country. Identified routes include Lucknow-Kanpur, Agra-Mathura, and Tirupati-Chennai, among others.
The trains will focus on carrying passengers between large urban centres and satellite cities, running on existing tracks of Indian Railways.”Vande Metro trains are oriented towards high acceleration with frequent stoppages. These trains will have 12 coaches each, large automatic doors with side seats,” an official working on the project told .
“These will be for unreserved or General category passengers who prefer using the trains for daily commute,” the official added.
The Indian Railways may consider increasing the number of coaches per train over routes where there is high demand for services. Besides Vande Metro, the national transporter also aims to begin trials of long distance focused Vande Sleeper trains in early May 2024.
Besides these, the Indian Railways has set its eyes on running 50 push-pull variant Amrit Bharat trains in the current fiscal. These trains have one engine each in the front and back of the rolling stock. “The next iteration of Amrit Bharat will have a cone shaped nose and will appear similar to European trains. These new Amrit Bharat trains will roll out by 2026,” the official quotes above said.
India’s First Semi High Speed Train, the Vande Bharat Express was introduced on the Indian Railways network in February 2019. The first trainset could achieve a maximum speed of 160 kmph and subsequent iterations have bettered on this metric.
Presently only medium distance chair car Vande Bharat trains are plying on the Indian Railways. Sleeper variant Vande Bharat trains are planned to start operating within 100 days of the next government taking charge. Frequent stoppage metro type Vande Bharat services are also expected to begin running shortly after.
